(Blumhouse Television and Hulu have partnered for a monthly horror anthology series titled Into The Dark, set to release a full holiday-themed feature the first Friday of every month. Horror anthology expert Matt Donato will be tackling the series one-by-one, stacking up the entries as they become streamable.)

When outsiders generalize “horror,” most minds zip to Romero zombies or Craven icons. Slash ‘em ups or creature features. Base preconceptions hone on grotesqueries thanks to such a narrow-minded definition of the word “horror,” but February’s lovey-dovey Valentine’s Day gush sets a perfect stage for broadening how novices view genre content. As I’ve once argued here on /Film, love is the secret ingredient when it comes to horror. Into The Dark’s Down accepts the task of dipping Cupid’s arrow into venomous toxins, stripping away Hollywood meet-cute hallmarks for a sickening display of blind dating gone psychopathic.

Blumhouse’s 2019 starts by taking one companywide step forward with their latest Into The Dark chapter. After critical reports identified a striking gender differential between The House Of Toby’s horror director hires, after Jason Blum’s interesting-at-best response, Sophia Takal becomes the brand’s first female filmmaker (*on a horror title*) with New Year, New You. In this entry: Instagram celebrity culture roasted on a spit and stuffed with false personality rage that mocks the charades some enact to seek mass marketed attention.

Hulu and Blumhouse’s holiday-horror film series Into the Dark continues today with New Year, New You, a New Year’s Eve-themed tale of terror from director Sophia Takal. In honor of the film hitting Hulu today (just in time for New Year’s weekend), we have two exclusive Into the Dark clips that go behind the scenes of New Year, New You.

(Blumhouse Television and Hulu have partnered for a monthly horror anthology series titled Into The Dark, set to release a full holiday-themed feature the first Friday of every month. Horror anthology expert Matt Donato will be tackling the series one-by-one, stacking up the entries as they become streamable.)

As /Film’s resident Christmas Horror nutcase, is it any surprise that Into The Dark’s December chapter would be my most anticipated? Enter Nacho Vigalondo’s Pooka!, a consumerism purgatory where struggling actor Wilson Clowes (Nyasha Hatendi) finds himself inexplicably connected to his latest gig’s oversized costume. No psycho Santa, no Krampus lashings, no murder-obsessed snowmen. Gerald Olson’s script is one of scorched innocence and the idea that children’s toys can be impossibly terrifying when seasonal corporate greed is the only thing driving motivation. An obvious holiday theme, yet one that barely scratches the surface on Pooka!.

With all the horror movies Blumhouse has released, they’ve never had a female director for a horror film. Until now. Sophia Takal, director of the amazing indie horror film Always Shine, will become the first female Blumhouse director with New Year New You, a feature-length entry in the Blumhouse/Hulu anthology series, Into the Dark. News of Takal’s hiring comes shortly after Blumhouse president Jason Blum offered a tone-deaf explanation regarding the lack of female Blumhouse directors – but the filmmaker was actually hired before those statements were made.

(Blumhouse Television and Hulu have partnered for a monthly horror anthology series titled Into The Dark, set to release a full holiday-themed feature the first Friday of every month. Horror anthology expert Matt Donato will be tackling the series one-by-one, stacking up the entries as they become streamable.)

Sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas is a holiday that demands noteworthy horror treatment, but to this day, Thanksgiving boasts abysmal genre cred. Eli Roth’s “GIVE ME NOW” Grindhouse faux-trailer? Killer puppet schlocker ThanksKilling? Home Sweet Home (1981)? For this critic, Into The Dark’s most intriguing entry was always going to be Patrick Lussier’s Flesh & Blood based purely on Turkey Day implications. Does it deliver? The most significant “F” word here is “Family,” yet much like October’s The Body, browned-and-buttered holiday aesthetics simmer in a rather bland broth.

The inspiring story of the boys soccer team that was rescued from a flooded cave in Thailand will be coming to the big screen, again. The Thai cave rescue was a story that was fated to become a movie — but more than seven movies? Maybe that’s pushing it. But that doesn’t mean anything to Universal, which has just optioned the rights to a still-unpublished book, Into the Dark, about the triumphant rescue.

(Blumhouse Television and Hulu have partnered for a monthly horror anthology series titled Into The Dark, set to release a full holiday-themed feature the first Friday of every month. Horror anthology expert Matt Donato will be tackling the series one-by-one, stacking up the entries as they become streamable.)

Paul Davis’ The Body kicks off Hulu and Blumhouse’s Into The Dark programming with an inaugural terror-tale of October’s Halloween fame. It’s no Trick ‘r Treat based on holiday immersion, yet manages to maintain a fun “evil in plain sight” vibe nonetheless. One dashingly charismatic hitman, Wilkes (Tom Bateman), has four hours to deliver his employer’s high-profile corpse if he wants to get paid. Hitches present themselves along the way – boozy parties, deflated tires, unexpected romance – but Wilkes’ stony sophistication makes everything into a game. One that innocent interveners stand no chance of winning.

There’s a whole sub-genre of holiday-themed horror, but Blumhouse and Hulu take it to another level with Into the Dark. Sure, there are the usual suspects — Halloween and Christmas — but what about all the holidays in between? Can you imagine an Easter horror story? Well, Into the Dark can.

An anthology series inspired by a holiday in every month in which its released, Into the Dark is an experiment in horror storytelling that will air 12 episodes over the course of a year. See the first Into the Dark teaser, released by Hulu, to get an idea of the terrifying year ahead of us.